Opinion: Med schools need to get with the times on medical marijuana, chronic pain, and more
In bygone days, when social change and the evolution of medical care moved at a more leisurely pace, medical education did the same. Those days are over, but medical schools don’t seem to have acknowledged that fact. Training new doctors in today’s rapidly evolving social, political, and medical climates demands a faster rate of curricular change than ever before, and our medical schools are falling behind.
As medical students who study the social and political systems that affect health care, it is clear to us that medical school curricula tend to give short shrift to socially relevant topics that are vitally important to our futures as practicing physicians.
Take nutrition. In found that three-quarters of medical schools fail to provide the recommended minimum number of hours of nutrition education and less than half teach any nutrition at all in clinical practice.
